


Immortality, with a Grain of Salt

by Sarai



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Cameos by Quynh & Booker, Cooking Lessons, Ethics, Family, Gen, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28461630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: As Nile adapts to immortal life, Joe and Nicky take turns teaching her a new recipe and sharing stories about their pasts. From dungeons to speakeasies to Soviet housing blocs, the immortal warriors decide who to fight and why, and build a family to last through all of it.Despite hearing that Andy barely knows where the kitchen is, Nile is determined to have one more cooking lesson.
Relationships: Nile Freeman & Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kayasani, Nile Freeman & Nicky | Nicolo di Genoa
Comments: 10
Kudos: 62
Collections: The Old Guard Mini Bang 2020





	1. Joe

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has amazing artwork by [blood-suits-and-tears](https://blood-suits-and-tears.tumblr.com/) and was beta-read by [thetimeladyswan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetimeladyswan/profile) and would honesty be a mess without them! Thank you both <3 (and please let me know if this isn't proper crediting and I'll amend it!)

_Gorgeous cover art by blood-suits-and-tears_

At the safehouse in the woods, there were no inexplicable pieces of artwork. There were plenty of explicable ones, old sketches tucked into older books and a painting on one wall of a picture window overlooking a crystal-blue bay. The safehouse itself had seen better days, but it was still standing, and the generator meant they had electricity this time. Maybe even hot water--not that Nile was holding her breath.  
  
Best of all, though, they had space. They had a big enough clearing, far enough from others, for a quick sparring session without needing to worry about attracting attention.  
  
Nile tried to remind herself as she ate dirt for the hundredth time that Nicky had been doing this for centuries. It was okay that she kept losing--like her mom would say, if you're still losing, it's because you're still trying. But Nile had been a Marine. She had been a fighter, a warrior. Now she felt like a kid kicking in the sandbox.  
  
"It's okay, Nile."  
  
Nicky helped her up.  
  
"We can stop for today."  
  
Gritting her teeth, Nile shook her head. "One more time." She would get it right this time.  
  
Nicky opened his mouth to object, then closed it. He nodded. "One more," he agreed.  
  
Nile picked up her sword again.  
  
Five minutes later, she followed Nicky into the cabin, repeating, "I'm sorry. I just meant to tap you."  
  
"It's okay," Nicky said. He moved his hand from his gashed, bloodied sleeve. "Look, it's already healed."  
  
Inside, they found Andy and Joe in the dimly lit kitchen. Andy sat with her head resting on her hand. Joe looked up from a book of poetry, eyes widened at the sight of Nicky. He was halfway out of his seat, making Andy flinch at the scrape of the chair on the floor, when Nicky assured him:  
  
"Just a scratch, caro."  
  
Joe gave it a moment before he nodded. "But, um…" He gestured toward Andy, and Nile realized it wasn't Nicky who had Joe so worried.  
  
"I'm fine," Andy bit out.  
  
"Andy," Nile set down her sword and pulled up a seat. "What's wrong?"  
  
"I'm fine, I--"  
  
"Andy," Nile interrupted.  
  
She had never in her life met anyone this stubborn! If Nicky had spent a thousand years perfecting his skills with a sword, Andy had spent at least twice that just on stubbornness--but she hadn't dealt in mortal injuries and illnesses for far, far longer.  
  
"It looks like a migraine," Nile offered--dim lights, flinching at noise…  
  
Andy glared at her.  
  
"What do we do?" Nicky asked.  
  
"Advil," Nile suggested, looking through her bag for the bottle, "and she should lie down for a while."  
  
"I'm fine."  
  
"You're full of crap, actually."  
  
Andy tried to glare at her again, but winced instead. She would have laughed if she hadn't been hurting. Instead she took a slow, deep breath.  
  
"Okay." Nicky stepped between them. Nile handed him the pill bottle. "Come on, Andy."  
  
Nile almost expected Andy to pull a weapon on him when he spoke that gently with her. Ever since London, she got her hackles up over anyone appearing to take care of her. This time, she let Nicky help her up, even though she insisted she didn't need his help. Joe touched Andy's back. She knocked his hand away, then reached for him again and squeezed his fingers.  
  
Joe watched them go, worry written in every line of his face.  
  
"Migraines can mess with your senses," Nile said. She doubted Andy meant to push Joe away--she missed the first time she reached for his hand.  
  
"Yeah," Joe agreed. "She might shoot you if you hover."  
  
"I know," she said, like she hadn't been considering doing it anyway.  
  
For a moment they stood, looking at the mostly-closed bedroom door and listening to soft murmurs they couldn't quite make out. The main reason Nile lost when she sparred with Nicky or Joe, aside from their centuries of experience, was her instinctive aversion to pain. She needed more time to unlearn a lifetime of knowledge that pain meant damage, and enough damage meant death, and that was permanent. Andy had to relearn just the opposite--to get used to pain and mortality all at once.  
  
Then Joe suggested, "Come help me with dinner. I'll teach you how to use spices before my husband tries to convince you they're unnecessary."  
  
Scrubbing the dirt and sweat from her hands, Nile objected, "I know how to cook."  
  
"Nicky and I learned this from a Punjabi family in Yuba in 1918, during the flu epidemic. At the time, there was all this anti-Hindu rhetoric around the Indian community--which wasn't even relevant since they were Sikh, but it's not the kind of rhetoric you hear from people who are open to understanding the nuances of diversity like 'not every person from a country a million square miles is the same'."  
  
Despite Joe's claim that she was going to help, Nile leaned back and watched as Joe minced garlic and ginger. The speed with which he moved with a sharp knife reminded her again how they forgot to take cares, to avoid damage. Joe's hands were steady. Most wouldn't take the risk, all the same.  
  
"What happened in Yuba?" Nile asked.  
  
"We visited families who had sickness but no access to medicine. Heat the skillet and about two tablespoons of butter, would you? We don't get sick, so we've been doing this since the plague. I think it makes it easier for Nicky, even when we fight for the right reasons."  
  
That was a difference between them. Watching the butter melt in the skillet, Nile considered what Nicky said. _We fight for what we think is right_ . Joe didn't qualify or equivocate. Then there was Andy, with her jaded views on the world.  
  
"What are the right reasons?"  
  
"We don't always agree."  
  


* * *

_Prohibition Era - USA_

The four of them sat at a table near the wall, a shadowy part of a crowded and shadowy club. Speakeasies had a little something for everyone. Joe enjoyed the brightness of the music and the snapping lyrics. Andy appreciated the dancers. Booker chased his whiskey with another whiskey. Nicky kept his eyes out, always scanning their surroundings even more than the others--and when he touched Joe's hand, Joe realized he had spotted another couple. In their time, Joe and Nicky's relationship had been mildly frowned upon by especially rigid religious higher-ups, and they had watched as the general acceptance eroded.  
  
"No one's denying that it's wrong," Andy said, "but what do you want us to do?"  
  
Joe looked to Nicky, sympathetic to his husband but not terribly surprised. He had warned him this wasn't likely to turn in his favor. Already it was a match between the two.  
  
"Something! Help those children. I visited the schools. It's horrible there."  
  
"We can kill the priests," Andy spiked the ball into Nicky's court.  
  
Booker gave a soft scoff into his cloudy glass. Nicky ignored him and frowned at Andy, the way he did with such a weighty disappointment in his eyes. Even after hundreds of years, Joe harbored no defenses against that frown.  
  
"We're not killing the priests," Nicky said. Blocked.  
  
"Then what, Nicky?" Andy shot back.  
  
Nicky had disguised himself as a priest to visit the industrial schools to which Native American children were being kidnapped. When his first-hand observations confirmed the worst, he had to do something.  
  
Booker excused himself to the bar for another drink.  
  
Nicky drew a deep breath and blew it out.  
  
"This is what we do," she said. "We're warriors. We fight, we don't rule."  
  
She was always firm on that point. A little too firm, an echo of something from the thousands of years before Joe or Nicky was even born. Neither of them had the desire to rule, and Booker didn't have a coup in his blood.  
  
"It's wrong."  
  
"I know." Andy's shoulders drooped with the words, and Nicky had won, but he didn't like the prize. "But it's not a problem we can slay our way out of."  
  


* * *

_Joe & Nile artwork by blood-suits-and-tears_

  
_Present Day_

  
By now, a lingering aroma permeated the kitchen, the garlic and ginger they had sauteed before adding pureed tomatoes, which were now bubbling away gently in the pan. Nile kept up a steady, constant stir as Joe poured cashew paste into the pan.  
  
"In a few minutes, the oil starts to separate at the sides--you'll see what I mean."  
  
She nodded. "So you all knew about the industrial schools?"  
  
"Everyone did. They weren't a secret."  
  
Nile hadn't known. She took three years of mandatory U.S. history classes in school, and not one of them mentioned the century of kidnapping, brainwashing, and cultural genocide. They talked about the First Thanksgiving. She had even done a report on a Native tribe in fifth grade. The way colonist forces treated them somehow didn't come up.  
  
Now she tried to process the fact that her new friends, her new _family_ had known and done nothing.  
  
"It's okay to be angry, but what were we supposed to do?" Joe asked. "Nicky always finds a way to do something good. We do what we can for poor families during plagues, we rescue victims of natural disasters. But we can't change the policy of an entire country," he reasoned. "There."  
  
"I see it." The difference in the gravy, that was what she saw. She did not see the justification.  
  
Joe took over stirring as he added water to the pan, explaining, "You want to make sure it's evenly incorporated. You won't ruin the gravy, it's just better this way. You know, when we fight alongside an army, Nicky never forgets that the men and women we're fighting are just like he was, that even if they're doing the wrong thing, they might be doing it with the purest hearts and bravest souls. We fought with the Resistance against the Nazis in France and with the Vietnamese against the Khmer Rouge, and no matter what we had to do or what we saw, he always found a way to make the world a little bit better. He's spent a thousand years with so much love inside him."  
  
Nile surmised, "You're telling me to be a better person."  
  
"I'm telling you to put the ginger into the pot."  
  
She did, still dissatisfied.  
  
At Joe's instruction, Nile used spices like fenugreek and garam masala, ingredients like paneer and cashew paste, things she had never used before. Masala was not a staple food for her growing up. The scent alone told her there might be something to gain in living long enough to keep tasting new foods for at least a century.  
  
They sat outside, Joe and Nicky on either side of Nile, without any conversation for a while. Overhead were too many stars to count or even to see in one look. The world smelled of pine and crisp air, and even though a part of Nile thought only of the potential threats lurking in the shadowy trees, there was a quiet peace to it.  
  
"Nile," Nicky said, "I hope this man has not been corrupting you with his radical theories about spices."  
  
Joe laughed softly. "I hope you are not falling for his anti-taste propaganda."  
  
Nile looked between the two of them, then kept eating.  
  
"Prego, prego, it's delicious but, you don't need to make up your mind, wait until you cook with me. Then decide who to believe, me or someone who has questionable taste."  
  
"My taste is exceptional."  
  
The slightest shift in Joe's tone was enough to make Nicky look away; without enough light to see clearly, Nile could only guess he was blushing. They were definitely not talking about food anymore.  
  
"I told Nile about the Indian schools."  
  
"I knew about the schools," Nile amended Joe's statement. "He just told me you didn't stop it."  
  
"We can't fix everything."  
  
They turned to see Andy in the doorway, looking more disheveled after a migraine than she had after massacring a small army in the Goussainville church. She sat beside Joe. Nile saw him squeeze her arm and the tiny nod she gave in response, but still wanted answers about the schools. How could anyone this powerful just let that happen?  
  
"The world got too big," Andy said. "During the genocide in Rwanda, the Nagorno-Karabakh War was raging. Bosnia, Croatia, and Yemen, too. The United Nations had observers at the Aouzou Strip to monitor the withdrawal of Libyan troops, but nothing like us. A hurricane killed almost three dozen people in Florida. Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic ties. The same day the genocide officially ended, there was a bombing in Argentina.  
  
"Where should we have been? None of us should go on missions alone. Between Joe, Nicky, Book, and me, where should we have intervened? Who was it right to engage? We're warriors. Killers are fair targets, what about rapists? What about enablers?  
  
"We didn't close the industrial schools because we're not tyrants. It was national policy, we couldn't overthrow the policy without overthrowing the government. Then what? We take it as a colony? Rule until we're overthrown ourselves, then sit in cages for a small eternity? Sometimes we have to let humanity make its mistakes. And if we had ruled the United States, we wouldn't have been able to do anything elsewhere. We wouldn't have been in Rwanda in the '90s or France in the '40s. Joe and Nicky wouldn't have been tending the sick during the polio crisis in Australia. We can't save everyone and we can't stop every wrong. We go where we can do some good."  
  
Nile turned this over in her head. She knew they were all but unstoppable, but she remembered what she had said that first day: _an army of four?_ They were all but unstoppable where they were, but they were an awfully small army against all the evil in a big world. Nile didn't like it, but she didn't know the answer, either. Where should they have gone, and who was it ethical to engage?  
  
She admitted to herself that she didn't like the way Andy talked about overthrowing the government, either. Nile had been a Marine, a proud Marine. How could she find peace with the idea of an overthrow of the government she had sworn to defend? What she had seen in the service told her that the United States was far from perfect, but it was still her home. For all its flaws as a country, good people lived there, people like her mom and her brother.  
  
"We have to focus on the good we can do instead of all the things we can't prevent," Nicky said.  
  
"And we remember that we're still human," Joe added.  
  
He had the final word. The silence slipped over them again, broken by breathing and the click of spoons against bowls. The wind slashed at her. Every night bit with cold at this elevation. Nile tilted her head back, looking up at the glitter of a million stars.


	2. Nicky

Nile thought she had coped remarkably well with the maelstrom her life had become these past months, but when Nicky reached into a cupboard and removed a set of tools that looked like something an old witch would use in one of those fantasy shows her brother used to love, she seriously considered bailing. This seemed like a great time to ask Joe or Andy for another lesson with a blade. They didn't teach the US military to use swords or scimitars, but when you ran with ageless warriors, expectations were a little different.   
  
She glanced past Nicky, into the living room. Andy had claimed a spot on the old couch between the duct tape renovations. At her feet was a bottle of oil as she slowly ran a cloth along Nile's practice sword.    
  
Their armory ran on "help yourself" rules, beyond everyone's pet weapon. Nile lacked a pet weapon.   
  
Sensing Nile's attention, Andy looked up.   
  
"You weren't doing it," she said.   
  
_ I'm just worried about you, Andy. _ Nile didn't say it. Instead, she retorted, "You practically took it out of my hands."   
  
Andy grinned at her.   
  
Nile sighed and turned her attention back to Nicky as he tossed peeled garlic cloves into the stone bowl.   
  
"Did you want to?" Nicky asked.   
  
"No…"    
  
But that wasn't the point! Nile needed to learn to care for her weapons, but that wasn't the point, either. She just didn't want Andy doing it. After the London job, she should have slowed down; instead, Andy kept acting like nothing had changed. Maybe Joe and Nicky were too far from mortality to remember, but Nile recognized the signs of tiredness and sore muscles. She knew one day Andy would catch the flu or a cut would get infected and she would need to rest, and she wouldn't do it.   
  
"She needs to take it easy."   
  
Nicky nodded, then called to her in Italian. Nile caught the words for 'wine' and 'go'.    
  
"Joe," Andy called, abandoning sword and couch alike, "booze run?"   
  
"Maybe I should stay. Someone has to remind my husband that spices exist for a reason."   
  
"Nile," said Nicky, "please tell my husband that spices can enhance the natural flavors of ingredients."   
  
Stepping into the small kitchen, Joe said, "Do you want to tell him that spices are natural flavors or should I do it?"   
  
Nile could live a thousand years and never get tired of the way Joe looked at Nicky with a gentle smile and sunlight in his eyes. Nicky continued wiping his hands on a hole-riddled dishtowel, but he slowed.   
  
"You can tell him that sometimes the simple tastes get overwhelmed and you miss something in over-seasoning," Nicky said, blushing. He had lost the banter. There was nothing but love in his voice.   
  
Joe's smile widened, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He took a step closer and spoke without taking his eyes off Nicky. "Only if you tell him there's more to life than salt."   
  
"Like…?"   
  
"Well, like…"   
  
Nile looked at Andy, who raised her eyebrows. Apparently this was commonplace. The apartment was half-cleaned and half-forgotten, dimmed by dodgy electricity and just big enough for the four of them to trip over one another. But there were Joe and Nicky, kissing each other like this was their paradise.   
  
"Yeah," Andy said. "Always."   
  
After Joe and Andy had left, Nicky said, "They'll get chocolate. Andy always gets chocolate. Here, you can mix this."   
  
Nile took the small bowl.   
  
"Once we left her in charge of dinner and she bought a chocolate pie."   
  
"Sounds like Andy."   
  
"Yeah," Nicky agreed. "She used to be different. Mix that and I'll tell you."   
  


* * *

_12th Century - Disputed territory (Middle East)_   
  
Nicolo woke to discomfort and shackles on his wrists, and knew the Saracen had got the better of him. He groaned and resettled himself. The bruises faded immediately once he moved off the rocks. He felt the absence of the weight of his sword, but looked, anyway--confirming its absence.    
  
"What have you done this time?"   
  
The Saracen.   
  
Nicolo and his enemy were shackled on opposite sides of what could only be called a dungeon. The floor was earthen and rocky, walls of stone. Torches burned by the door and a small, barred window set high up in the wall added some small light. He didn't need light to know with whom he was incarcerated.   
  
"Me?" Nicolo asked, turning to the man. "Why would I chain myself? You did this!"   
  
The Saracen raised his hands, demonstrating how they, too, were shackled.   
  
_ What? _   
  
"You put yourself here to trick me! You and your friends--"   
  
"What friends? You think you've left me enough life to make friends?"   
  
They volleyed back and forth until the door opened, slow on loud hinges, and Nicolo and the Saracen fell silent, both staring, waiting. Nicolo reached for his weapon. It was still missing. He sat up straighter, braced for a fight. He glanced from the Saracen to the door again, surprised that he seemed as uncertain as Nicolo.   
  
Two figures strode into the room, shadowed against the torchlight. Women. One wore loose trousers; one had some sort of axe across her back. He recognized that axe! Its dual curved blades stood out from other weapons. He had seen it in his strange dreams--they were allies of the Saracen after all!   
  
"Who are you?" Nicolo asked.   
  
"My name is Quynh," said one of the women. Not the one with the axe. She had an accent he struggled to place, something from the East. "This is Andromache."   
  
Quynh looked to Andromache and smiled at her. Andromache smiled back. The torchlight danced, but it held strong enough for Nicolo to see the shift in their eyes as they forgot together where and with whom they were. They lost the world and they kept one another.    
  
The Saracen asked, "Why are you in my dreams?"   
  
In  _ his _ dreams?!    
  
"You're immortal," Andromache said. "You've probably realized by now that your injuries heal, even the ones that kill you."   
  
"My injuries heal because this Saracen has cursed me with his heathen magics!" Nicolo spat. He had reasoned it for himself a long time ago, that one day he would kill the other man, and he would stay dead, and this long nightmare would be over. Most of Nicolo's deaths had been at the Saracen's hands, and most of the Saracen's at his, but--   
  


* * *

_Present Day_   
  
"Wait," Nile interrupted. "This story is about Joe, right?"   
  
"It's a story about Andy," Nicky said, "but Joe and Quynh were there." He peered over her shoulder at the stuff she had been mixing, which at this point had the color of a pureed troll doll. "That's good, add this next."   
  
She looked at the bowl, which contained the garlic Nicky had bashed into a paste, olive oil, salt (she couldn't help smiling) and what she was pretty sure was cumin. Though after cooking with Joe, Nile was comfortable admitting there were more spices she didn't know than those she did.   
  
"I'm starting to think you gave me the hard job."   
  
"We can trade. Here, take the pestle."   
  
She had watched him slowly grind chickpeas for what felt like ten minutes, Nicky working as he told his story even after Nile's pureed troll was done. It shouldn't be that hard, right? Never mind that she felt like she was back in high school, that time she was roped into playing Second Witch in MacBeth. After a few false starts, Nile fell into a rhythm, circling the bowl and crushing chickpeas as she went. She added a handful more before prompting Nicky:   
  
"So you believed your immortality was because he had cursed you?"   
  
"When immortality found me, I was a different man. I was consumed in hate. I shouted about what I believed he had done, how he had wronged me. Everything I had done, I laid at his feet. Joe and I tried to shout over each other. He said I had come to his home. I said he had no right to the holy land. Finally, they unlocked Joe's shackles and took him away."   
  
Nile shook her head. "Andy's recruitment skills need work."   
  
"With you. Me and Joe, we would have killed each other. They took him and they left me in the dungeon for maybe another hour or two. When I saw Andy again, I thought she was going to kill me."   
  


* * *

_12th Century - Disputed territory (Middle East)_   
  
...but instead of an axe, Andromache carried a lantern and a knapsack. She set down the lantern first, then knelt and sat back on her heels, watching Nicolo. He watched her in turn. What did she want, this strange woman? What had the Saracen told her? Was she going to kill him after all?   
  


* * *

_Present Day_

  
"You really hated him."   
  
"I hated the idea of him."   
  


* * *

  
_12th Century - Disputed territory (Middle East)_   
  
  
"Hold still," she said. She took a bottle from her knapsack, and a cloth, and went to wipe his face.    
  
Nicolo flinched away from her.   
  
"I said hold still."    
  
She cupped the back of his head so he stopped squirming and started by pressing the cloth to his forehead. Cool water dripped down his face. Later, he would learn that she could kill as if on instinct, that she was a deadly and efficient woman. Now, he closed his eyes and he felt the gentleness in her touch, let her bathe the grime from his face and take his anger with it. He forgot about his quest, his curse, his Saracen enemy.    
  
When she was finished with his face, she took his hands and cleaned away the worst of the mess. He couldn't remember the last time he had washed properly. He couldn't remember the last time he had been touched like this, with such care.   
  
"I brought you some food. If I unlock these, will you promise to behave?"   
  
He nodded. Yes, of course he will behave.   
  
Andromache scoffed. "Nice try, kid."   
  
He wasn't a kid, but he had been lying. She held the bottle to his lips and helped him drink.   
  
Nicolo coughed. "I expected water!"   
  
"You're complaining?"   
  
"No."   
  
She gave him another sip of wine, then tore off a piece of bread and held it up, questioning. When he nodded, she brought it to his mouth. He resented being treated this way. It was the Saracen's fault. He had done this. He had cursed Nicolo and it was because of the curse that he was here.   
  
"You were a Templar," she said.   
  
He nodded. "You talked to the Saracen."   
  
"His name is Yusuf."   
  
"I don't want to know his name!" The anger was back, flaring through Nicolo, burning him. He had to let it out or it would burn him up. "He did this to me! I'm going to kill him. I will find a way, I can kill him and make it last. My curse will die with him."   
  
"Strange that you want to die," Andromache mused.    
  
"I'm not supposed to be alive!"   
  
"Who says it's a curse and not a miracle?"   
  
"It's not natural!"   
  
"If it were natural, it wouldn't be a miracle."   
  
She offered the wine again while he was dumbfounded. Nicolo drank. Ranted. He barely noticed that over the course of his rants, one mouthful at a time, she got a decent meal of bread, wine, and figs into him, and between that and his freshly-cleaned hands and face, he felt calmer despite his curse--and despite the fact he had been kept from breaking it.   
  
When the light from the window waned, Andromache said, "I would untie you but I don't trust you. Do you want the lantern?"   
  
"No."   
  
She wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and left him in the dungeon and the growing dark.    
  


* * *

_Present Day_

  
"How long were you down there?" Nile asked    
  
"A week, something like that. Roll out the dough like this." Nicky demonstrated the ideal thickness of each round, then left Nile to the dough and checked the skillet he had left heating in the oven. "Andy visited me twice a day. She brought me food and water, emptied the bucket--I was a prisoner, but I would have killed Joe again. They were right to keep me that way until I was ready."   
  
"So that's why," Nile realized. The dough wasn't cooperating. Somehow Nicky's had turned into an almost perfect circle; hers was a knobby oval. "When Andy had that migraine, I thought I heard you call her 'Mom'."   
  
Nicky replied with a little smile and an almost shy shrug. "She sat with me in the dark. The others pretended not to notice; it was a private nickname. But they knew. After we lost Quynh, something changed in Andy and she didn't want to be called that anymore. I think she always knew that to me, she was the same Andromache."   
  
"Still your mother." Nile understood, even if she struggled to reconcile loving feelings toward her own mother with the woman who had waged a small massacre at the church in Goussainville.    
  
He nodded once. "I think it's hot enough, how many do you have?"   
  
"Um… four."   
  
Nicky took his own perfectly round piece of dough and one of Nile's circle-adjacent shapes, laying them both in the skillet.   
  
"It was a week or more from the time they captured me to the day I could sit down with the others like a real person, and that happened because Andy took the time. It was longer before Joe and I became how we are. The Andy you met had forgotten."   
  
"You're telling me to be patient with her," Nile surmised.    
  
She didn't need to be taught that lesson.    
  
Andy could be a real pain in the ass, but Nile had seen how much she loved the others. How she was always moving. The way she hadn't known how to talk to Nile without fighting her first, and the way she was ready to die for Joe and Nicky. She was stubborn and proud, but when she had been honest that day at Merrick headquarters, Andy had shown Nile who Booker, Joe, and Nicky cared for so deeply.   
  
"No," Nicky said. "I'm telling you that by being who you are, you… brought something back in her. Thank you for saving someone I love very much."   
  
The apartment door opened and Nile and Nicky both reached for weapons.   
  
"It's us, hayati."   
  
Nile and Nicky relaxed. The kitchen wasn't actually big enough for Joe and Andy to join them, but by now even Nile had lost any sense of 'personal space' with her new family. She shifted to the side, though she kept rolling out the little rounds of dough as Joe drew Nicky close and murmured something in his ear. Andy reached around them to grab a tin mug from the cupboard. With a tilt of her head and a raised eyebrow, she offered one to Nile, who accepted. Andy popped the cork and poured. She had to lean over the stove to hand the second mug to Nile.   
  
"Nicolo, your bread is burning," Andy commented half into the mug.   
  
Nicky spun away from Joe with a string of Italian words too quick for Nile to even pick one out.   
  
"Not burned, a little crisp," he reported, removing the two pieces from the oven. He wrapped them in a towel and set them aside as Nile passed him two more.   
  
They had to move the weapons off the table to make space for dinner, and tossed a few old cushions around the table. As she brought a bowl to the table, Nile said, "Worth remembering that I've never done this before."   
  
"She did a great job," Nicky added.   
  
"I've never even used a mortar and pestle."   
  
Maybe Nicky had chosen the recipes to match his story about where he and Joe met. They had hummus, pita, and olives. The pita was warm from the oven. Nile didn't mind the oddly shaped bread now, and despite Joe's objection, the homemade hummus did so too have taste!   
  
They were  _ old _ . Nile hadn't managed to get an answer from Andy, but with Joe and Nicky's best guesses, with their ages combined they were as old as writing, maybe as old as cultivated crops. They were as old as Aleppo or Jericho. For everything time stole, it left behind this immortal family. It left behind an army of three people who had never looked happier than they did sitting down to dinner together, who might not have even noticed their stolen glances at one another, their easy smiles.    
  
Nile noticed.    
  
"I agree with Nicky," Andy said, "great work, Nile."   
  
"She's only saying that because Nicky's her favorite," Joe said.   
  
"What are you talking about," Nile objected, "I'm her favorite!"   
  
She meant it as a joke and everyone laughed, but the lingering looks made her feel maybe not like a favorite, but loved just as much.   



	3. Andy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some Italian in this chapter that I got from Google Translate, so it may be horribly incorrect. It probably is, in fact. But I did my best XD

"He shouldn't be speaking Italian at all."   
  
"Va bene, ma se lo fa--"   
  
Nile tried to pick out words she recognized. She did not speak Italian, but there were enough similarities with Spanish-- _ good, it...? _ Not enough to understand what he was saying.   
  
"But he doesn't, Nicky," Andy interrupted, "no one spoke Italian in AD 180."   
  
"Why do you say AD if you don't believe in God?" Nile asked, wading into a swamp she almost certainly did not want to be bogged down in. She couldn't help it. Of all her new family's old traditions, criticizing historical fiction was one of the most entertaining, and Nile wanted in. Just because she hadn't been there didn't mean she had to sit quietly.   
  
Joe gave a deliberate, dramatic raise of his eyebrows at the question, intrigued. Nile knew he only sometimes debated, preferring to play a dual role of spectator and instigator while Nicky and Andy got into it with each other.   
  
"Because," Andy said, in a tone that told Nile she had already lost, "the world remembers my work with Dionysus and no one has time for false humility."   
  
"Dionysus?"    
  
Sometimes it pissed her off that Andy couldn't just say,  _ Let me tell you about my adventures… _ but Nile understood what she was trying to do, in her own way. She didn't want to be an old woman imparting wisdom. Bragging let her tell her stories without feeling like they were over. And even though Nile knew Dionysus was the Greek god of wine and fruit, she sensed she had just been taken to school.   
  
"Dionysus Exiguus, originator of the term AD. He needed a better way to mark his Easter tables."   
  
Nile looked back to the screen, where occasional lines and grainy images reminded her that this was a VHS. The old technology felt strangely comfortable. It matched the old building; the apartment had been Khrushchyovka, cheap Soviet housing, now was a collection of cast-offs and reclaims, and a safe place to stay--albeit not a true safehouse. Nothing matched Andy's words, but went paired with a claim that she had helped invent the term  _ anno domini _ ?   
  
"I've heard Commodus was more attractive," Nile said.   
  
Andy hummed and tilted her head back.   
  
Nicky sighed. Joe laughed.    
  
"You didn't!" Nile objected. No, Andy had to be kidding!    
  
"With Emperor Commodus?" Nicky asked. "Andromache. Tell her you didn't."   
  
With a cheeky smile that got her out of any trouble, Andy said, "Everyone did, Nicky."   
  
Nicky put his face in his hands. Joe stroked his arm, laughing all the while.   
  
Why did Nile even pretend there were limits to possibility? She was watching a fading VHS in communist bloc housing with a Crusader, his immortal husband, and a woman who had known Rodin and Commodus.    
  
"We never get to watch a movie in peace," Nicky lamented.   
  
"You would if Andy cooked with me," Nile said. She had asked before, more than once, but Andy always refused--said she didn't cook or she was busy with something else. Nile was joking more than asking.   
  
"Okay," Andy agreed.    
  
The others stared at her, then Joe and Nicky shifted to having a silent conversation with one another, one communicated entirely with raised eyebrows and slight inclinations or shakes of the head   
  
"Okay?" Nile asked.   
  
"Okay," Andy repeated. She grabbed her jacket and the key to their ex-Soviet apartment, checked her weapon, then she glanced back at Nile. "Are you coming?"   
  
It wasn't until Joe reached over and nudged her chin that Nile realized she was actually open-mouthed gaping. Andy didn't agree to this. Andy  _ never _ agreed to this; Nile hadn't even been asking. She had been joking!   
  
Nicky nodded in Andy's direction.  _ Go. _   
  
"Yeah. I'm coming."   
  
She hadn't missed the fleeting expression on Andy's face, hadn't forgotten what happened the last time she let someone else check a weapon for her. Exiling Booker had been harsh--too harsh, in Nile's opinion. Andy hadn't spoken against it. She hadn't said much of anything in their discussion. Maybe she missed him, or maybe the betrayal stung.   
  
Nile grabbed her things.   
  
The elevator in the building was out. When they arrived, Joe told her the elevator was out and the others laughed. The elevator had always been out. They walked the five flights to ground level.   
  
As they stepped out into biting cold and petrol fumes, Nile said, "Joe and Nicky have been telling me about some of your… adventures. From before." Her words left puffs of cloud in the air.    
  
"Yeah."   
  
"They told me about you and Quynh."   
  
The name made Andy flinch, but she didn't break her stride, half-melted snow crunching and squelching under her boots.   
  
"Andy, I didn't know. I wouldn't have said what I said if--"   
  
Half laughing, Andy said, "Yes, you would've. You wanted it to hurt. We didn't exactly get off on the right foot, you don't need to pretend it was anything else."   
  
Nile nodded--it was true. Maybe she would have been more tactful if she knew Andy and Quynh were lovers. She hadn't really thought about Andy having a personal life. She had 'married to the job' written all over her. Then again, maybe Nile would have said it anyway. She had been angry at the time; she had wanted to land a blow against this woman who wouldn't give her an inch, who had seen her through trauma with only the slightest cracks in a very harsh facade.   
  
"It could've been worse. Joe and Nicky spent years hunting each other."   
  
"Joe and Nicky met during the Cr--" Nile began, then paused as they passed a group of tourists muttering over a map. She moved closer and lowered her voice. "Things were different then." She should have been better than the man Nicky described, someone consumed in hate.    
  
They reached the market. Andy grabbed a basket and asked, "You have your list, right?"   
  
"My list?" Nile repeated.   
  
"Yeah, your shopping list. We're cooking tonight, aren't we?" Her nose was pink from the cold. Nile debated mentioning that. There were more deaths than mere violence to avoid.   
  
"Yeah…"   
  
"I don't cook, so you have a list or not?" Andy sounded just like she had earlier, halfway amused, even as Nile realized she hadn't agreed to cook with Andy. Andy had agreed to cook with her.    
  
That brought Nile to a new challenge. She didn't know many recipes off the top of her head. After the sorts of things Nicky and Joe taught her to cook, she wanted to bring something equally worthwhile. They treated preparing food for others as an act of service. She wasn't going to show affection with Kraft--even if, with everything that had happened lately, she had been craving that blue box sameness.   
  
Before she could decide, Andy's cell buzzed.   
  
"Yeah?... What, when?... Okay--no, we'll come to you…. Okay. Yeah. Fuck." She snapped the phone shut, then told Nile, "The Khrushchyovka's burned as a hideout. We're meeting Copley in Prague." By now she knew that Andy never meant the city she named; they were meeting Copley somewhere outside Prague that Nile hadn't yet heard of. "They'll pick us up in ten minutes."   
  
Nile nodded. She felt no affection for the Khrushchyovka place, but the development gave her a shot of adrenaline. Someone had found them. It sounded like Copley got the news to them before enemies tracked them down, but how close had they come? It reminded her that while immortal life included breaks, it offered no true respite. They had enemies. Knowing made Nile long for the simplicity of a war zone. Or better yet--   
  
"Ten minutes?"   
  
Andy nodded.   
  
Nile grabbed the basket out of her hand. "I'll be back in five."   
  
Nicky was already behind the wheel, so he and Joe took the first shift driving while Nile and Andy slept in the back, the canvas bag on Nile's lap. It was nice drifting off with their soft conversation in the background. The last thing Nile saw before drifting off was Joe's fingers on Nicky's wrist as he drove.   
  


* * *

  
  
"Nile."   
  
Someone was shaking her shoulder, but she didn't want to get up. She was comfortable here. In this sleepy fog, she could stay dreaming forever.   
  
"Let her sleep."   
  
Nile's eyes snapped open. "I'm awake," she objected. She reached for the keys just as Nicky was handing them to Andy.   
  
Andy raised an eyebrow.   
  
"You drive like an old lady."   
  
A daring old lady, with poor vision and possibly an amphetamine habit. Andy's driving was the kind of experience that could make someone reconsider their long-time dream of seeing Disneyland one day. It was the sort of driving a person did when they might live forever and sometimes forgot that they wouldn't.   
  
There wasn't much view to speak of. Nile focused on following the road in the car's headlights, not trying to make out the grassy terrain to either side in the dark. The heater did its level best. In the rearview mirror, she saw that Joe and Nicky were asleep in the sort of backseat cuddle that was only comfortable through overwhelming love.    
  
"Nicky told you how he and I met?" Andy asked.   
  
"He mentioned it."   
  
"There's another side to the story."   
  
Nile nodded, eyes on the road. Of course. There was the story of how Andy and Quynh tracked Joe and Nicky, how they followed their dreams to find two angry, desperate men.   
  
"We left Nicky in the dungeon to cool off. Joe--Yusuf--was different. Nicolo wanted him dead, he believed if both men died, they would find peace. Yusuf just wanted it to stop. He told us the Crusaders came, how they destroyed. They probably didn't teach you in school that the Crusaders just decimated Jewish villages on the way to Jerusalem. It was about destruction for them. Joe never wanted to be a soldier. While Nicolo cursed us in the dungeon, Yusuf sat with me and Quynh and told us how he wanted to be an artist. He just wanted to live."   
  
Nile glanced again at the rearview mirror. The men in the backseat remained deeply asleep.    
  
"He's always been this way," Andy continued. "Nicky is the righteous warrior."   
  
"Not Joe?"   
  
"You can do a thing well without being defined by what you do."   
  
"And that's Joe?"   
  
"That's Joe," Andy confirmed. "We don't always win, Nile. Some fights are too big. Joe's the one who always remembers that our work doesn't end there. He and Nicky stayed in Spain in the 1490s, escorting Jewish and Muslim groups to the ports. They helped drive the Americans out of Vietnam, but helped them get out safely. Me, you, and Nicky use violence for good. Joe does good using violence."   
  
"That's the same thing!" Nile thought about Andy's rosy cheeks earlier, Andy blowing on her fingers. Maybe she was sick. Maybe after all those years, she didn't remember how fevered grogginess felt.   
  
"It's the difference between looking for the best time to fight and being willing to help at any cost."   
  
Or maybe she had a perfectly sensible point.   
  
They drove in silence for a long time.    
  
When they reached their destination, the headlights cast eerie images of neglected buildings that looked unsettlingly similar to the Khrushchyovka they had left behind. Nile saw the shine of two eyes and the flash of a fleeing animal--a raccoon, maybe, though it moved too quickly for her to be certain. It scrambled away behind a snowy pile with jutting, jagged edges that suggested refuse.   
  
"This is the place?" she asked, dubious.   
  
"This is it. Welcome to Bozi Dar."   
  
As Nile parked, pulling alongside one of the dull, cubish buildings for some semblance of subtlety, Andy leaned over to shake Nicky. He was asleep nearly on top of Joe, who woke when Nicky sat up.   
  
"Are we here?" Joe asked.   
  
"We're here," Andy confirmed.   
  
"Whatever 'here' is," Nile added.   
  
They grabbed their things, never much--weapons, a change of clothes, maybe a comb or a toothbrush. Nile had her canvas bag from the market. She followed Nicky into the building, not stopping for any door, because there wasn't one. The inside wasn't much warmer than outdoors and she worried again about staying here with Andy. She could get sick. Or frostbite.   
  
"This place was a Soviet town," Nicky explained. "When the Soviets left, they took anything of value, strategic or otherwise. Then they gave it back to the Czech people, saying it is worth more than the cost of cleaning up."   
  
"The people who lived here probably worked at the air base nearby," Joe took up the story. They both told this so matter-of-factly when it sounded like a ghost story. It probably  _ was _ a ghost story. "The air base is used by bikers and for clubs sometimes, but the town is mostly left alone."   
  
"Mostly?" Nile asked.   
  
"If anyone asks, we are squatters," Nicky said.   
  
"Or revelers," Joe added, to which only Andy laughed.   
  
In a cramped, interior room, they retrieved a few things from a stash beneath the floorboards: sleeping bags, a lantern. That explained why they were in an interior room at least. The room they had passed through had an especially well boarded-up window. By the lantern's light, Nile had a better look at their current hideout, a place somewhere between abandoned and dilapidated. Part of her wished for a pillow, even though her muscles wouldn't hold onto any ache.   
  
If her mom could see this place…    
  
"It's okay, Nile," Nicky told her.   
  
"I'm fine," she said. With their sleeping bags rolled out, it would be like some kind of urban explorer sleepover. "Does anyone have a knife?"   
  
A knife was produced and handed over. Nile set to work. Once the others realized what she was doing, they left her alone. Andy and Joe went to check for signs of anyone else here, while Nicky cleared away enough space for the sleeping bags to be rolled out. It wasn't the easiest work. It was so cold in this old ruin, the peanut butter wouldn't spread, so she did her best to layer thin slices without squashing the bread too badly. The dagger wasn't exactly a butter knife, but it did the trick well enough with the jelly.   
  
When Andy and Joe returned, Nile had a very late dinner prepared. It wasn't on par with what she had made with Nicky and Joe and they didn't have cups so they had to swig from the same milk bottle, but no one seemed to mind. The four of them in their shared space had even generated just enough body heat to file the sharpest edge off the chill.   
  
"I know it's basic," she couldn't help saying as she watched a Crusader pass a frosted bottle of milk to a defender, and an ageless warrior licked peanut butter from her thumb.   
  
"I've never had this before," Joe said. The others chimed in that neither had they.   
  
"But," Nicky added, "I wouldn't mind having it again."   
  
After a moment, Andy asked, "Now imagine if we found out I'm allergic to peanut butter."   
  
A stunned and horrified silence descended. Andy grinned wickedly and bit again into her sandwich. Nicky hurled a piece of crust at her. Joe hugged her, leaving both of them laughing, and Nile grinning even as she rolled her eyes. 

A year ago, this was not where she had imagined herself, smiling over peanut butter sandwiches with her new family by lantern light in a Soviet ghost town.  
  
Immortal life had innumerable twists. And Nile was okay with that.


End file.
